SIMON LAMBERT: Our pensions are rubbish compared to the good old days, but don't fall into your own personal retirement crisis

Do we have a pension crisis? We certainly have an awful lot of people aspiring to retire on a comfortable income but with no real plan of how to do so.

What lies at the root of the problem is endlessly debated and some would argue that the constant tinkering triggered by that debate is not doing the cause any favours.

Moves to cut charges, improve choice and nudge or coerce financial institutions into offering a better deal will always get my vote and we’ve campaigned at This is Money for all of those things to happen and keep happening.

But the fundamental problem with pensions is that we just aren’t saving enough.

Shattered: Britain's final salary pensions meant our retirement funds were once dubbed world class, but those days are gone.

In tight times like these, when inflation has been outpacing wages and life can seem like an endless round of cutbacks, sticking more in a pension can seem like an impossible task.

But beyond those who really cannot find the extra cash to salt away, there are many who just don’t want to bother. Others say they believe that pensions just aren't worthwhile, yet fail to save enough elsewhere to fund a retirement they are presumably not hoping to spend eating beans in the dark.

I wonder sometimes whether this is because the message that if you don’t do something about this you will be retiring much poorer than you think isn’t getting through.

Yes, us money journalists are always banging on about it and so are the regular pensions talking heads, but often we are preaching to the converted and there is one place such talk is noticeable by its absence.

And it’s the place people most strongly associate their pension prospects with – work.

Employers don’t seem so keen on pointing out to their staff that what they are saving is not going to deliver a retirement income anything like the one they enjoy at work.

An investing expert suggested to me yesterday that perhaps it was because even employers don’t quite get the situation. A cynic would reply that maybe that’s because the people at the top still have nice big pensions and much less to worry about.

I suspect though that there is more to it than that.

Firstly, after years of mis-selling scandals companies are very reluctant to take responsibility for financially advising staff, even if they do expect them to invest their pensions themselves.

Secondly, a lot of firms are probably quite embarrassed about how modern defined contribution pensions look rubbish in comparison to the old-fashioned defined benefit schemes.

The huge gap between those with final salary-style pensions and those with inferior defined contribution ones, certainly doesn’t help.

The former meant you simply worked throughout your life to get a reasonable pension, with your employer taking responsibility.

The latter puts you entirely at the mercy of Mr Market, both as you invest to build your pot and when you convert it to pension income. To make it work, you need to save a lot harder and take an interest in investing it.

To push retirement investing to as many people as possible the pensions industry needs to keep cleaning up its act, the Government needs to promise no more grabs on pension pots, the tax-free savings limits need to rise and start being more aspirational, and investment fund managers need to remember to put their customers first.

But we've also got a part to play - especially seeing as it's our retirement funds we are talking about not those of the pensions bosses, MPs and fund managers, who are unlikely to end up suffering in retirement.

While we can rightly bemoan the loss of what was often dubbed a world-class pensions system, we need to move on.

Final salary is done with. It’s not coming back for the mainstream and we need to adjust and make the most we possibly can of our less generous work pensions.

So this year, This is Money will keep campaigning on charges, choice and better deals, but we’re also going to be doing more to help readers understand how they can invest to make sure they don’t end up with their own personal pension crisis.